Space and Science BS Thread

FYI Rocket Report junkies....this opened up todays edition

After virtually no vacation this year, I am going to try to take most of the next two weeks off (Starship hops permitting). Because of this, the newsletter will not return until December 3

 

7km/sec is 26000 km/hour.. exact same velocity. 1g is ~10m/sec. Assuming a 7 km barrel (let's make the math easy) you accelerated 7000m in 1 second, or roughly 700g.

The question isn't 'man rated', the question is, what are you sending up that will take up that much shock load?

Let's assume the competition is a fully reusable starship, where you only need to spend fuel and oxidizer, and can carry up just about any load, not just raw materials.

(edited typo)

 

Wait I'm missing something. 7 km/second isn't the same as 26 km/hour. At first I thought simple mistake but you realize 26 km/hour is only 16 mph? I'm assuming you're meaning to say 26,000 kph (maybe you meant 26K km/hour?), which is about 7 km/second. Clearing that up before it gets confusing. As a Canadian who took a few years of university physics that was hurting my head.

Anywho my point is it's interesting tech. You can fire missiles with guidance computers and control surfaces no problem out of most gun tubes now, the US Army has had several working systems that do that just fine. 700 G is achievable, heck like others have said you could always go magnetic acceleration as your propellant as well. Yes, the G force is incredible, but it could be dealt with especially for simple loads. I doubt you'd ever use the system for something leaving orbit. More like here's a way to get small simple satellites and raw material to orbit without a rocket.

I'm not here to say, "hey, rockets are dumb look at this." It's more like, "hey, if we're going to launch a lot of small mini satellite payloads this technology could be competitive but will never be used because it was never developed past prototype and rockets are mature."

It's a fun read beyond the Wikipedia articles. I mean shit the guy who came up with it was killed but the Mossad (not maybe was killed, it's well know Israel killed him at this point.) At one point the USSR added these sort of launches to SALT but it was removed before signing. I'm all for rockets, but learning about other launch systems that have been confused it neat beyond just being a naysayer.

 

26k km.. My typo.

26000 (kph) / 3600 (seconds per h) = 7.2

700g is much, MUCH more than a reasonable satellite like a starlink can handle. That, and you can only shoot at whatever inclinations it's built into (unless you can figure out how to change the direction of such a huge cannon). And that's talking 7km worth of track. 700m and you're talking 7000g .. etc. Heck, 70km worth of cannon and you're gonna be having 70g load, etc.

 

So let's take it further. What about firing components up for assembly in orbit? Small station where the parts are captured, assembled, and then launched. The delta from a station at 200 km wouldn't be much to assemble a constellation. It's worth a look and way more viable than dream technology like a space elevator.

 

You also have to think about launching heavier mass items that are more resilient to G forces than carbon fiber and metal foil.

 

The concept never made it past launching a projectile that could change it's heading mid flight. To be clear, in the 1960s they could build a rocket that could handle way more than 700G (assuming that's the case since the barrels were only about 100 feet long and the projectiles in the final year were well past the 100 km space barrier). Given in the 1960s that was achievable, before we went to the moon or used a computer the size of a small room on board to keep things moving the right direction on the way, I would suspect it might be surprising how far this technology could go.

 

Beautiful evening for the Atlas 5 launch!
Was really cool with the sun nice and low to be able to see the solid boosters fall back to earth.

 

Finally.
Should be a SpaceX launch tomorrow

 

It was moved to Sunday evening now.

 

Sarcasm?

It’ll be their 20th launch in 2020.

During a pandemic that’s brought other systems to their knees.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches

 

Yep, lots of it, that launch seemed to take forever.
Tomorrow should be a great day for NASA and SpaceX, wish I could be there to watch.

 

It won't be pretty...

 

Good thing the industry is slowly transitioning to private..

 

Agreed.

 

Live now:
https://www.spacex.com/

 

Clouds got in the way but still gave me goosebumps!

 

Great launch.

 

Baby Yoda zero-g indicator

 

*Sets phaser to stun* Freeze! Space Police!